IC Industry Waking Up To Security


By Jeff Dorsch & Ed Sperling Many people pay lip service to the concept of security in Internet of Things devices, software, and networks. That oversight is beginning to fade away, however, as companies begin digging into one of the broadest and most complex problems in the IoT age. Unlike other technology issues, which have been solved in increments, security is all-inclusive. While ... » read more

Tech Talk: Power Reduction


Sonics CTO Drew Wingard talks about energy processing units, and how to utilize idling circuitry to save as much as 95% of the energy spent on specific processes. [youtube vid=IZy38BfHP60] » read more

The Mightier Microcontroller


Microcontrollers are becoming more complex, more powerful, and significantly more useful, but those improvements come with strings attached. While it's relatively straightforward to develop multi-core microcontroller (MCU) hardware with advanced power management features, it's much more difficult to write software for these chips because memory is limited. CPUs can use on-chip memory such as... » read more

Virtualization Revisited


Virtual instruction set computing (VISC) is getting a second look as power and performance improvements begin to slow and [getkc id="74" comment="Moore's Law"] is supplanted by [getkc id="279" comment="Koomey's Law"]. While the current crop of [getkc id="185" kc_name="finFETs"] will likely be extended for at least one more process node, there is some debate about what comes next, whether tha... » read more

Rethinking Processor Architectures


The semiconductor industry's obsession with clock speeds, cores and how many transistors fit on a piece of silicon may be nearing an end for real this time. The [getentity id="22048" comment="IEEE"] said it will develop the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS), effectively setting the industry agenda for future silicon benchmarking and adding metrics that are relevant to specifi... » read more

Turning Verification Inside Out


A new motivation for rebalancing came to me during a conversation I had a couple weeks ago at the Agile Alliance Technical Conference. I had the chance to compare my day-to-day responsibilities with those of Lisa Crispin. Lisa is a software test expert that is very well regarded within the [getkc id="182" comment="Agile Development"] community. Think of her as a Harry Foster/Janick Bergeron typ... » read more

Automating System Design


Change is underway in the chip design world, creating opportunities and challenges that reach far beyond questions about whether Moore’s Law is slowing or stopping. Never before in the history of semiconductors has design been so complex and sophisticated, and never has it touched so many lives in so many interesting ways. This is all happening as a result of the chip’s enabling role in ... » read more

Rightsizing Challenges Grow


Rightsizing chip architectures is getting much more complicated. There are more options to choose from, more potential bottlenecks, and many more choices about what process to use at what process node and for which markets and price points. Rightsizing is a way of targeting chips to specific application needs, supplying sufficient performance while minimizing power and cost. It has been a to... » read more

The Next Big Challenge


In his keynote speech at the Synopsys User Group last month, company chairman and co-CEO Aart de Geus defined IoT as the Internet of Threats. As interviews across the semiconductor industry have revealed over the past 12 months, his comment was very much on target. As more things are connected—and that includes everything from watches to toasters to cars to buildings within a city—securi... » read more

White-Box Crypto Gains Traction


Ask any cryptography expert which is better, hardware- or software-based cryptography, and they'll almost always choose the hardware. But as the IoE begins to take root in cost-sensitive markets with tight market windows, that won't always be an option. Plan B is software cryptography, which historically has been used at the application level in the form of anti-virus, anti-spyware, and soft... » read more

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